Re: [stella] Burning Atari 2600 Carts

From: Chris Gurley <ocver@xxxxxxxxx>
> I am seeking information on how to burn eproms for
> atari 2600 development. I have found some - but very
> little. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place?
This is straightforward. Brian has already pointed you to Randy's
site which has the usual instructions for salvaging a 2600 2K or
4K cart. (Look for Pac-Man carts, they are ubiquitous and
nobody will care if you destroy one :-)
I will give you a piece of advice, before trying to make a distro
cart make a "frankencart," that is a cart with a socket. That
way you can burn & test eproms without soldering them in.
It's also a cool way, if you have a PROM burner but no
supercharger or cuttle cart, of playing games you download
as .bins on a real 2600.
BTW the best way to get a PROM off an Atari cart circuit
board is to snip all the pins with a sharp pair of side-cutting
pliers, then desolder the pins one at a time. The boards themselves
aren't too well made and are more important than the 87,000,000th
copy of Pac-Man you'll be mutilating.
--Roger Williams
P.S. If you're wondering why you need the 7404, Atari in
their wisdom decided to wire an address line to chip select
on the PROM so it's positive-true instead of inverted as was
standard for ROMs in those days. Of course Atari found
it cheaper to have mass quantities of non-standard ROMs
made than to add a chip to the console so standard ROMs
would work.
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